Food ‘n Drink

Welcome to Food 'n Drink, a personal site about food, drink, cooking and basic gardening / grow your own. Born out of a love of food, I hope this site has something for everyone - Sarah

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The Old Fisherman Restaurant

Tonight I took my parents and David out for dinner at The Old Fisherman which is in Shabbington, Buckinghamshire. We’ve been there once before and it’s a nice little restaurant with great service.

Chocolate Brownie, Cherries and Cream After reading my previous post I’ve realised that I ate exactly the same meal this time as I did the last time! Any difference? Well the starter (melted goats cheese on a croute and lettuce) was very nice, and the dessert of chocolate brownie, cherries and cream was gorgeous. The main course (now called Chicken Supreme Parmigiana) had been changed slightly and came with/on a chunky tomato and courgette sauce. The chicken wasn’t so dry, except on the edges, however frustratingly pepper had been added onto the chicken before putting the cheese on top, which wasn’t great as I hate pepper on most food and really don’t like it being added out of my control!

All in all the meal was very nice and came to just over £100 for the 4 of us including drinks which is pretty good value, luckily the brownie made up for my pepper issue ;)

Pancake Day!

Pancakes Today is Shrove Tuesday, and in the UK we traditionally eat pancakes on this day. Pancakes are one of the easiest desserts to make and are nice and quick. Plus, they don’t have to be a dessert. Plenty of pancake houses will feature savoury pancakes. However, my personal favourite is sweet (of course!).

Forget pancake mixes, you don’t know what’s gone in there. All you need is 3 ingredients plus some butter or oil for frying them in.

1/2 pint (300ml) milk
1 egg
Plain flour
Pinch of salt (optional, I don’t use it).

Beat the milk and egg together then slowly add flour and beat (an electric whisk is useful here) until you get a thick but still loose consistency, similar to that of a slighly thick sauce (or double cream). Then heat a pan and add some oil or butter to coat the base of it, pour in some of the mixture until it thinly covers the base of the pain, allow it to cook until the top is almost firm, then turn it over (flipping pancakes is great fun!).

Cook all of the mixture into pancakes. I tend to keep an oven on low heat to put the finished ones in so that they’re all still hot when you’re finished. Then serve with whatever suits your taste

  • Icing sugar
  • Lemon juice (fresh is best!)
  • Maple syrup
  • Stewed Fruit
  • Vanilla icecream

Or for savoury ideas why not try ham and cheese?

Don’t forget… pancakes are great any time of the year, not just today ;)

Gooseberry Streusel

This weekend I decided that I needed to get the Gooseberries in the freezer cooked and dealt with. We’ve had these for ages, but as I don’t really eat them they’ve not been used (they’re only there for David!).

So I asked my mum for her gooseberry streusel recipe, one I can remember her making when I was little. We’ve always had gooseberries, I can remember eating them straight off the bush as a child. We have our own gooseberry bush now which produces a small amount of gooseberries, but my taste seems to have changed as I don’t like them much anymore.

Today I gave the streusel recipe a go. It’s quite a nice light cake and I love the streusel topping, and David said it all tasted good (I can’t comment on the gooseberries! Although I did eat it all :) ). You can also freeze it whole or cut it into portions/quarters and freeze it for up to 2 months, so I’ve frozen 2 quarters and kept the rest out. It’s quite a moist cake, from the gooseberries, so it doesn’t need any cream or custard, however it can’t be kept for too long else it’ll go mouldy.

Ingredients

Streusel Topping:
150g self raising flour
100g unsalted butter
100g caster sugar

225g gooseberries, topped and tailed

Sponge base:
180g self raising flour
Pinch of salt
125g caster sugar
125g unsalted butter
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tablespoon of milk

Method

Take the streusel ingredients, put the flour and butter into a bowl and rub together until it’s resembling a crumbly mix, add the sugar and continue to rub the mixture together to get your streusel mix (it’s hard to explain but you’ll know when it’s right! Took me about 10 minutes to do!!)

For the sponge base, add the salt into the flour, cream the butter and sugar together, then slowly add the eggs. Add a couple of spoons of flour/salt into the blender/mixer. Then you need to fold in (by hand) the rest of the flour and the milk, until it’s a smooth consistency. In a greased cake tin (I used a 23cm one, ideally you should use a 21cm tin), spoon the cake mixture onto the base and spread out. Then put a single layer of gooseberries onto the mixture, going from the centre out. Try not to have gooseberries on the edge as they’ll probably burn. Then scatter your streusel topping over the gooseberries and try to ensure the gooseberries are covered completely (to prevent burning).

Bake at 180 degrees celsius for 75 minutes. Allow to cool and then store in a cake tin, or freeze.

First Seedlings Through

Tomato Seedlings A week after sowing my first seeds of the year, my first seedlings have made an appearance! I’ve now got 3 tomato plant seedlings showing through, the first popped up after just 5 days :)

I’ve also planted some hot chilli plant seeds (scotch bonnet and habanero chillis) that we bought last week to keep David happy.

Whilst out last week we also picked up some packs of potatoes for growing, some red onions and a couple of potato sacks for growing potatoes in. I’ve got 3 types of potatoes, first earlies, second earlies and main crop. I’m hoping that I can time it so that the first earlies can be picked and then the main crop can go into the sack straight after, then plant some more after the second earlies are picked.

Gardening Update

Seed trays in the propagator Following on from my post last week about my new propogator, this weekend I finally got the time to get my first set of seeds on the go. At present we’ve got dwarf beans and courgettes going in peat pots, and then chillis, leeks and tomatoes in the seed tray. The propogator is a nice decent size and should allow the seedlings to grow up to the right height before getting moved outside.

We also went out to another local garden centre yesterday (I love these places!) to see if they had any scotch bonnet chilli seeds. Whilst there I also picked up a couple of potato grow bags (deep bags with a slit on the side) and 3 different types of potatoes which’ll be ready at varying times throughout the summer and the main crop (King Edwards) should keep a fair while (whether they last that long or not who knows!). We won’t get a massive amount of potatoes I doubt but it does mean we can get a few crops going.

I checked on my garlic yesterday too and all 6 cloves that I planted are now showing shoots, even the one that the squirrel dug up! :D

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